A new Nature Communications paper entitled “A high-entropy manganite in an ordered nanocomposite for long-term application in solid oxide cells” is released today, May the 11th, 2021. The communication is led by Albert Tarancón, ICREA Professor and head of the Nanoionics and Fuel Cells group at IREC, and Federico Baiutti from the same group. The paper is a collaborative effort between IREC, University of Cambridge (UK), Colorado School of Mines (USA), Coventry University (UK), ICN2-CSIC-BIST (Spain), Purdue University (USA) and Imperial College London (UK).
The communication reports on the development of a novel class of functional materials with enhanced electrochemical properties based on nano-engineered composite oxides.
The researchers realized vertically aligned nanocomposites of an ionic and an electronic conductor with straight applicability as functional layers in solid oxide cells. The ordered structured is characterized by a coherent, dense array of vertical interfaces at the nm-scale. The synergy between the two materials results in high electrochemically activity and superior thermal stability. The authors use a combination of state-of-the-art and novel techniques including physical vapour deposition, atom-probe tomography combined with oxygen isotopic exchange, density functional theory calculations, to disclose the exciting properties of the material and to highlight the relevance of local disorder and long-range arrangements for functional oxides nano-engineering.
The Nature Communications paper can be downloaded from this link.
The research carried out during this investigation has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 824072 (HARVESTORE), No 681146 (ULTRASOFC) and No 101017709 (EPISTORE), all projects led by the Nanoionics and Fuel Cells group at IREC.
